The Top 6 Water Guns of All Time

Today, the water gun is a weapon that is almost always employed solely in the pursuit of fun. But it wasn't always that way. Some early squirt guns were intended to give targets an eyeful of harmful chemicals. Here are our six favorite guns of all time.

The First Water Guns Ever

The First Water Guns Ever

The first water guns began popping up in the late 1800s, and they were little more than glorified eyedroppers. These so-called squeeze-bulb-style guns used a rubber bladder to draw in and squeeze out liquid. Of course, compared to today's blasters, these pistols were lacking in the power and ammo departments (they had to be refilled after a single shot). One of the first was the cast-iron USA Liquid Pistol, which was patented in 1896.

The Traditional Squirt Gun

The Traditional Squirt Gun

Today, most small squirt guns use what is called a trigger pump, which is the same basic mechanism used by spray bottles. In these guns, the trigger pushes a small piston into the water-filled cylinder. This reduces the amount of available volume in the cylinder, causing water to shoot out. While such simple squirt guns can be made very small and inexpensively, they are never really powerful. The reason: The gun can only shoot as much water out as its piston can displace. And while this classic design deserves marks for endurance, we think it'd be unfair to pick a single model as our favorite (after all—none of them is particularly impressive). So this slot goes to the generic squirt gun itself.